I don’t mean to kick up a shitstorm, but I’d like to get this out of my system. Maternity leave is unfair! At least it’s blatantly unfair to those of us who don’t decide to have children. I remember having an interesting debate on IHM’s blog regarding this some time ago. This also applies to men who get paternity leave.
The way I see it, having a child is a choice a parent makes. A difficult choice true, and one that entails a lot of suffering, but a personal choice nonetheless. Their choices are their own, and I assume they’re not doing it as a service to society, but for their own selfish reasons. So my point is that if parents can make a personal choice and get time off for it, non parents should also be given time off for their other personal choices.
So if I feel the need to go and do some soul searching for a few months, I should be able to get leave in the same way that maternity and paternity leave is granted. Both are personal choices and I feel both must be treated on an equal footing.
Some say that maternity leave is the same as accident leave. It’s not. An accident is just that- an accident. Becoming a parent is a choice. And granting someone leave for their choice and not doing the same for another is unfair treatment in my eyes.
Another view is that women bear all the discomfort of pregnancy and childbirth and so they should be granted leave. But again, isn’t that a choice to bear that discomfort for their personal reasons? Moreover, suppose I want to go explore the jungles, that too is a dangerous undertaking and might even kill me. Will I get leave (paid or unpaid) for a few months to pursue my dream? No.
Some say that women in India don’t really have a choice to become pregnant. While this is certainly true in many cases, I feel that a woman working for a company that’s sophisticated enough to give maternity leave isn’t as helpless as another woman in the villages. Moreover, being forced to have a child is a bad reason to have one. If domestic violence is an issue, then the problem is not maternity leave but something else entirely! Also, maternity leave is common not just in India, but also in developed countries the world where women aren’t coerced into getting pregnant.
Finally, there are those who say that having a child is a service to society. I have to say “Gimme a break!” No woman chooses to get pregnant saying “I must do this for the good of mankind” and in India I don’t think extinction of the race is anywhere around the corner.
So what’s the deal here? Why is maternity and paternity leave much more prevalent than say “Soul searching” leave, or just “Personal leave” for a few months in India?
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This question goes directly to the fallacy of feminism.
Women are breeding cows, not thinking machines. Birth rates are falling all over the world, frequently below replacement levels, as in Japan and western Europe. This is having grave consequences for retirement systems and future prosperity as not enough workers are being bred to maintain the social systems. You might take a look at “Demographic Winter” website. Because native populations are not reproducing all kinds of foreigners are being imported that cause social dissension because they are not native to the culture. The result is social catastrophe all over the world.
The basic assumption of feminism, that women should have equal rights with men in the job market, is wrong. A man cannot attract a woman as a mate unless he has the income to provide for her and her children. A woman can, however, attract a man as a mate simply by having a baby box. He needs the job to function; she doesn’t. Read “The Woman Racket” by Steve Moxon for confirmation.As I pointed out in a post on another of your threads, women cause all kinds of problems when they are mixed with men. They are sex objects and are always filing law suits because someone propositioned or offended them. They disrupt the operations of the office by reproducing on the company’s time. All these problems are eliminated by keeping them out of the job market in the home.
It is idle to say that men should “learn to control themselves”. Nature is nature and cannot be changed. The biggest problem of the modern world is the forced mixing of incompatible groups. women and men are incompatible in the workplace, just as various races that do not like each other are incompatible (Koreans and Japanes, whites and blacks, Mexicans and blacks, etc.) Segregation by function eliminates these problems.
In reply to john thames
You don’t seem to be drawing a line between what the facts are and what you think the facts should be. When you say that women are not “thinking machines” (and men are,) you’re making up your own facts which is not accepted in a logical argument.
http://www.rebelnews.org/opinion/genders/7938-feminism-refuted
This explains my position very well.
You are ignoring the essence of the argument.
My point is that there are indeed valid reasons for keeping women out of areas of society where they do not belong. The military is another example. It makes little sense to allow women to be killed and horribly mutilated on the battlefield while simultaneously protecting their tits and ass from their own troops. Societies for millenia have segregated women from men by biological function. If you think that this is an accident, then read my very logical essays and you will quickly see that you are wrong.
In reply to john thames
Please don’t make derogatory comments against anyone on my blog. If you do so, I will delete them. You’re welcome to project your views in a logical manner but don’t insult anyone or put them down. Please take this as a first warning.
Indeed, the essence of your argument is that women are supposed to “stay in their place.” This is an opinion from your end and not a fact. If it’s a fact, please provide appropriate references. And don’t point me to articles you’ve written or ask me to read a book. Give your reasons here in a short and concise form if you can.
May I ask: What derogatory comments? I do not see any. My postings are very concise.
To debate anything, one must first read and analyze a position. If you are not willing to read one page essays, how can you seriously debate anything? Do you imagine that all issues can be reduced to one paragraph sound bites? Your distinction between facts and opinions is also hard to fathom. All debates involve the interpretation of facts. Facts, standing alone, lead to no conclusions as different people shall interpret the facts differently. I see no response to my arguments, I merely read unfounded allegations that I am confusing arguments with facts.i
Is this sufficiently concise? I see no possible way of doing the subject justice in fewer words.
WHY MEN SHOULD HAVE THE JOBS
Everyone these days accepts the idea that women should have equal job rights with men. But this view is entirely fallacious. There are sound reasons why men should be given preference over women in the job market. A man cannot attract a woman as a mate unless he has a job to provide for her and her children. But a woman can attract a man by offering her sexual services and her reproductive capacity. He must have the job to get married; she can get married without the job. A man’s money strengthens the marriage and the family; the woman’s money weakens it. When a man is supporting a family, the child grows up with two parents. The male children have a role model to aspire to. The woman, being dependent on her husband’s pay check, has an incentive to stay married and function as a home maker. When the woman has the job and the money, she can reproduce on her own with the father absent. The social consequences are disastrous. Single mothers generate male criminals by the bushel. Even when the woman does marry, her economic independence enables her to file for divorce without fear of the consequences. Thus, marriage exists at the woman’s whim. It ceases to be the bedrock of society.
There are additional problems caused by giving women the jobs. Women like to marry up; women like to marry down. Marriages where the wife out earns the husband have a considerably higher divorce rate than marriages where the husband out earns the wife. When women must marry down, the usual consequence is an increased divorce rate with increased chances of spousal abuse. Women pursuing careers tend to suppress their reproduction to climb the corporate ladder. Despite maternity leave, women know that corporations do not like maternity disruptions. The old “family wage” system of paying a man enough to support a family encouraged reproduction. The woman could raise the children without the extra burden of working at an office.
In short, giving women job equality is theoretically wrong and has proved disastrous in practice. Few realize that driving women out of the home and into the job market under the pretense of “liberation” has always been basic Marxism. When the industrial revolution began women demanded that employers pay their husbands sufficient wages to allow women to stay home and raise the children. It was Marx and Engel’s and their disciples who wished to destroy the system to make women members of the working class. Today, the old Marxist ideal has been achieved by the capitalist wage-slave system. Both husband and wife must work to afford what they used to have on one pay check. Women have achieved proletarian equality by enraging their men folk. The family has been destroyed and sex roles have faded into oblivion. Neither men nor women have benefited from this process. But one red-haired Khazar who writes of “The End of Men” in the Atlantic Monthly, knows precisely who has really won.
In reply to john thames
Again, you’re not presenting facts but an opinion. Take this as an example:
“A man cannot attract a woman as a mate unless he has a job to provide for her and her children”
Obviously false. Not every woman wants to be supported. My own wife is an example. I earn half of what she does and we don’t have children either.
Your entire comment is littered with unsubstantiated sentences like this which anyone can refute with even a cursory reading. Of course, you can bolster your claims by providing scientific references, papers, or research from reputed sources, but you have done nothing of the sort.
So you have a right to your opinion, but no one will listen to you unless you present substantiated facts.
Here is the ultimate in conciseness.
Women will be entitled to equal pay when they want equal child support and alimony deducted from their pay checks.
Wrong again.
Although there are exceptions to every rule, as a general proposition it holds true. Women, generally speaking, want a man with a paycheck to support the family. Apply this test. How many men with money are willing to marry a woman without money versus how many women with money are willing to marry a man without money? That should give you the answer. The last time I checked womern outearning their husbands had a 40% higher divorce rate than the reverse. That is a fact – and one that speaks in support of my position, not yours.
In reply to john thames
You still have to show that this stems from something in women’s nature rather than for cultural reasons. The fact is that the numbers of women who can support themselves is rising, and that means there’s nothing in women’s nature as such which makes them want men to support them.
Women have been the physically weaker sex and have therefore been historically taken advantage of. Now that physical strength doesn’t matter, they’re showing what they’re capable of.
@ Bhagwad- Even if what he is saying is heartfelt, it isn’t such an issue I feel because one odd such thinkers will always exist.
Maternity leave is not unfair, and here is why.
Also, pregnancy and child bearing has more consequences than just granting leave. They are the citizens of tomorrow. They are future customers for your company. They may be the ones who will contribute to your senior citizen discounts through their tax payments tomorrow. And especially when parents are educated and working, as in the case in workplaces where women get maternity leaves, the chances are much higher that these children will grow up to be contributors to the society of tomorrow and indirectly contribute to your well being. So even from a purely selfish standpoint, it is only beneficial to you in the long run.
Also think about this. Say you are a smoker. Or a mountain climber. Health wise, both of them put you at higher risk for cancer / accidents. Both of them are choices you make personally. Yet, when you fall ill or break your leg, your company gives you sickness leave so that you can recuperate and come back to work. Now, people with healthier lifestyles / aversion to risky hobbies may argue about why they should indirectly contribute to your sickness leave / accident leave when they do not get to take this leave as a result of their choices. Maybe they want to take off for soul searching in the time you are off for the leave you took after your mountain climbing accident. Why are these cases not brought up as examples of unfairness? It is because the workplace has traditionally always been male dominated. So all the rules and benefits were tailored to fit the males. So when we now have a mixed workplace and there are benefits tailored for women, suddenly you feel that it is not fair. Because you are not used to it.
Btw, just like maternity leave, there is paternity leave offered in the USA to offer the same child bonding experience to men. And men here take it very proudly and look forward to it.
In reply to Clueless
This is probably the most logical rationalization I’ve heard till now. Not your first point about children being an investment, but your second talking about giving accident leave to those who are more susceptible.
But I feel it’s not enough for two reasons. First, it’s difficult if not impossible to link a particular sickness/accident to a person’s lifestyle. I can get cancer even without indulging in a dangerous lifestyle. So in the absence of any clear determination, a person is innocent until proved guilty.
Second, when a person has to take real sick leave, it’s not a benefit provided to them. It’s a net loss. I would rather be healthy and not have to take sick leave than to get cancer/broken arm/tuberculosis and take medical leave! So the leave is not treated as a “reward” or an incentive at all.
Having children is a different matter since it’s a net benefit. Not only do people have children to improve their life but they also get rewarded for it :)
Finally, I’m not against maternity leave (or paternity leave.) I’m saying we should stop calling it maternity/paternity leave and call it “personal leave” for any personal activity – whether that activity is having babies, or going rock climbing.
In reply to bhagwad
@Bhagwad
I guess when you are climbing a mountain, fall off a cliff and have multiple fractures, you can indeed directly co-relate it to climbing that mountain :) Lung cancer and tobacco pretty much go hand in hand. And when you say that sick leave is a net loss, pregnancy disability can also be viewed the same way. No one really thinks of going through labor or having your stomach cut up as a pleasurable process and the recovery is not fun either!
And about the other comment that no one has children for the benefit of the society, it is true that we have children for our own benefit. But it also directly has an impact on the workforce of tomorrow even if we are not thinking about it when we have children. It is like me buying a home. I don’t buy to improve the economy. I buy a home to improve my own lifestyle. But at the same time, my purchase does contribute to it, which is why the government makes it more attractive for me to buy a home by making my interest payments tax deductible!
In reply to Clueless
You’re right – hospitalization is unpleasant. But the point is that one chooses to be hospitalized. The discomfort is part of a larger plan to ensure greater happiness in the future which doesn’t apply to a mountain climber.
Now if we felt that the mountain climber was purposely falling and breaking his bones, perhaps we can talk about removing their sick leave! And let’s face it – how many people in a regular workplace take time off for lung cancer? I’ve never met any (though I’m sure there are lots of them.) But pregnancy is far more commonplace…many orders of magnitude more commonplace. So comparing the two isn’t really useful.
In reply to bhagwad
@Bhagwad
Now, I want to put a serious twist on what you are saying. You say you are losing out because I made the choice of having a baby and you did not. You also agree that majority of the people do go ahead and have kids. So I can ask you what is preventing you from availing this benefit. The work place is not stopping you per se from having babies. It is a benefit they offer to all. If you choose not to avail this benefit, why should it be taken away from everyone else? It is just like some other subsidy a workplace may offer. It could say that it will give a discount of $X if you buy a phone of a particular brand. You don’t like that brand and you don’t buy the phone. But it would be wrong to say that just because you are not availing the benefit, it should be taken off for everyone else too!
My workplace may offer a lot of benefits that I may not be utilizing because they don’t suit me. Why is maternity leave, which is also a benefit, then singled out every single time? You may say that only women can have babies. Then I can also go ahead and say that only men have prostrate cancer, so why should my insurance cover it when I will never have prostrate cancer!
In reply to Clueless
I’ve never made the argument that maternity leave should not be given! I’m making the argument that it shouldn’t be called maternity leave and that I should get the same leave for my personal pursuit…that’s it.
In the example of prostate cancer, no one chooses to get prostate cancer. And even if the person gets leave for prostate cancer, it’s a net loss. The man doesn’t benefit from the experience. In any case, one assumes that the male specific and female specific diseases kind of balance out. Otherwise they’ll fall into different risk groups and pay separate insurance premiums (in fact it happens like this most of the time.)
With regard to the phone and discount example, the reason a business will have such a scheme in the first place is because of some tie up – not due to ideological reasons. The first is valid since it’s a business. The second is outside its purview which is why I have a problem with it.
You have made me think and I feel you do have a point.